David Whale

Writing dialogue can be a tricky proposition, especially for inexperienced writers.  When I look back on some of my early writing, I cringe at some of the stilted, robotic dialogue contained therein and would love to come up with some valid excuse for it.  But really, the only excuse is that I wasn’t very good at it.

A lot of people struggle with dialogue and since I’m relatively happy with how I handle it these days, I decided that my first article would be on this subject.  The usual caveat applies: this is all my opinion, so feel free to use all or part of my advice or ignore the lot.

Talking too much.

The single biggest problem among inexperienced writers when tackling dialogue is that they write like they’re writing.  And that’s probably the least clear way I could possibly have worded it, sorry.  What I mean is, they present their dialogue as if it’s written dialogue as opposed to allowing the character to speak.  The character’s voice isn’t allowed to come through, because the writer is using the dialogue to tell the story as opposed to letting the character do it themselves.

I feel like I’m still not being entirely clear, so I’ll give you an example of what I mean.

“I don’t know why Nancy would say that I’m lazy,” Edgar said with a shrug. “And I don’t care, either.  We still need to get to the factory and disable Heinrich’s locator beacon before the dragons sense it or they’re going to invade Earth and millions of people will die.”

So, what’s wrong with that?  Not a whole lot looked at completely on its own, but consider the context.  We can assume a few things about the story: first, we can reasonably assume that someone has just mentioned that Nancy thinks Edgar is lazy; second, we can safely assume that the reader already knows what Edgar and his friend need to do; and third, we can assume the reader knows why they need to do it.  In other words, instead of giving us any character elements to latch onto, Edgar’s dialogue is simply re-stating facts we already know either from another character’s dialogue or from the narration.

So let’s try this:

“Don’t know,” said Edgar, shrugging. “Don’t care.  Still gotta get it done.”

It isn’t perfect to be sure, but it accomplished two things.  The clipped nature of the dialogue shows that Edgar really doesn’t care what Nancy thinks, but it also helps show that he’s focussed on what needs to be done.  The reference points are still there — Nancy’s opinion and the mission at hand — without explicitly re-stating them.

Over-explaining.

A similar problem to the one discussed above is over-explaining of motivation.  With the possible exception of a child caught with their hand in a cookie jar or someone testifying at their own trial, no one goes into long winded explanations of their motivations for doing the things they do.  Neither should your characters.

Let’s go back to Edgar for a minute…

“I saw the dragon swooping down at us,” he said.  “So the only thing I could think to do was push you underwater so he couldn’t see you.  If he couldn’t see you, he wouldn’t know you were there, so he couldn’t hurt you.  And I didn’t want him to hurt you because I love you and so that why I did what I did.”

Yes, I know — facepalm worthy.

So let’s list what we have here.  Edgar loves someone (let’s assume it’s Nancy, even though she seems like she might be kind of a bitch).  He pushed her underwater so a dragon wouldn’t kill her.  And his writer has no idea what “subtext” means.  As an aside, I feel I should mention at this juncture that his writer is me.  I’m making up these examples for the purpose of this article, I’m not tearing down some poor sod for my own enjoyment.

But back to Edgar.  How can we fix this?  again, we have to make some assumptions about the context and the surrounding story, one of which being that the writer has shown us some development of Edgar’s feelings for Nancy.  the other being that the dragon attack was actually played out in the story’s narration.  With those assumptions in place, we don’t need for Edgar to gush all over the place about why he did what he did — we already know.  But maybe Nancy hasn’t clued in yet, so let’s try this:

“I just… wanted you safe, because I…,” he said, looking everywhere but at Nancy. “Just because.”

Certainly not perfect, but you get the idea.  He’s not explicitly saying everything, but the subtext is there.  There’s enough of a bread-crumb trail (or Reese’s Pieces trail if you prefer) to lead Nancy to the conclusion that Edgar has feelings for her.  Of course you may need to have him explicitly declare his love at this point in the story, so by all means do it.  Just make sure he doesn’t go into some ridiculous Edward Cullen-type “I am now going to explain every feeling I have” speech.  That’s no good for anyone.

The point here is that your character’s motivations should be clear from their actions.  they shouldn’t need to be explained to the audience via dialogue.

That’s not grammatically correct!

I don’t care.  Think about every single person you know.  Now tell me how many of them speak in grammatically correct sentences at all times.  If you answered with anything other than “none,” you’re a filthy liar.

Does dialogue need to make sense?  Yes.  Does it need to be perfect, grammatically speaking?  Absolutely not.  In fact, it likely shouldn’t be, or it will look odd because people don’t talk like that, my friend.  People stutter, people start sentences in the middle, people make awkward pauses, people say they need to “axe” you a question and “supposebly” you’re going to know “pacifically” the answer they’re looking for.  If you’re writing dialogue for some head of state giving a dramatic speech, maybe handle the grammar differently, but for general dialogue, the best rule of thumb is to write how people actually speak.

That being said, if you’re writing an historical novel or even a high fantasy novel, your approach should be quite different.  In Victorian England people spoke much differently than they do in modern-day Toronto, just as people in modern-day Toronto speak much differently than Bilbo Baggins.

Dialect

I’ll be upfront with this… I hate reading dialogue written in dialect.  Don’t do it.  Or do it if you want — it’s your story after all.  However, if you do write in dialect, be careful not to overdo it.  There’s a very fine line between writing dialect and writing a barely-readable cartoon.

Just in case not all of you know what I’m talking about, writing in dialect is essentially writing with an accent.  Instead of writing normally, like this, Ah’d be writin’ jes’ li’ thes and assumin’ ye read it wi’ a Sco’ish accent.

If you choose to write dialect, apply it carefully and gently.  Do not make it difficult for your readers.  Pick key words against which you will apply your dialect and leave everything else alone.  If we know your character is Scottish, or Texan or Australian, we do not need every second word of their dialogue to remind us of that fact.  Remember, the harder the reader has to think about the words you’re using the more you’re pulling them out of your story.  Dialogue, like the rest of your work, should be an immersive environment.  Be very careful about using any dialect that makes your reader have to stop and make sure they know what word you’re trying to use.

So those are some of my thoughts on dialogue.  If you have any questions or have any topics you’d like for me to write about, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below or email me directly at davidwhale@whalewriter.com.